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Five flavours: Day 10 Hoi An to Bangkok
Soundtrack: “England 2 Colombia 0”, Kirsty MacColl Our last breakfast in Hoi An was mi quang, wonderful rice noodles, pork, quail eggs, and shrimp, in a salty broth full of flavour. I did a better job of making the ca phe sua da, being more patient in my water pouring. The hotel dining room television has generally been off during out stay, but today the Mexico vs England men’s world cup football game was on, so as I ate I watched the second half. The Vietnamese commentator was getting very excited when goals were scored or came close to being scored. I haven’t been paying the hugest amount of attention…
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Five flavours: Day 9 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Fame”, David Bowie Tôi no vô bụng rồi. Sitting on the bed after a wonderful evening eating (and drinking) our way around Viet Nam, all within a few hundred steps of our hotel. So very full indeed. Breakfast was banh mi, and I’m happy to say that our hotel does one of the best banh mi around. Having had the famous (thanks Anthony Bourdain) Banh Mi Phuong yesterday, I’d honestly say that I thought this morning’s was better. The bread was as crunchy, and the fillings, pork, egg, greens, pate, were just a little better, plumper, and more balanced. After a few days here we’re feeling the hotel loves…
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Five flavours: Day 8 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”, The Kinks I could get the hang of holidays like this. Sleep in, breakfast, shopping, banh mi, massage, relaxing, more shopping, cocktails, and dinner. The hotel’s breakfast this morning included a serious serve of cao lau, meaty rice noodles with plenty of pork on top. Lots of greens on the side too. I’m working on a theory, backed up by no evidence whatsoever, that the Vietnamese diet used to just be a lot of noodles and meat, until a nutritionist (possibly sponsored by big lettuce) came along and got famous promoting having a big serve of chopped greens on the side of every soup dish.…
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Five flavours: Day 7 Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Fashion”, David Bowie A quiet day in Hoi An. We started with the hotel breakfast, not a huge buffet but a small menu freshly prepared to order. We started with some yogurt and fresh fruit: watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit and banana. I think that this hotel, and many hotels in Hoi An, get a lot of western tourists wanting western food, as when I was asked for my coffee order and I replied ca phe sua da, our server’s eyes lit up. I went for a banh mi for breakfast, the delicious crunchy bread, nicely filled with pork, scrambled egg, vegetables, herbs, and a little spicy sauce. I happily…
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Five flavours: Day 6 Hoi An
Soundtrack: The Hoi An Memories show music Today started way too early, as I’d booked us into a tour of My Son Sanctuary and surrounds. There were two choices, the 5am start to beat the heat, or the 7.30am, so I went with the 5am. FYI My Son is pronounced “mee son”. Our guide had the indecency of being on time. I’d managed to quickly drink a can of coffee so I was vaguely conscious for the drive through Hoi An picking up the rest of the tour. Then is was about an hour out to My Son via the local twisting roads. For part of this our guide gave…
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Five flavours: Day 5 Hue to Hoi An
Soundtrack: “Sharp Dressed Man”, ZZ Top This should be a short post today, as we didn’t really do much. I don’t really plan these posts, just open up the laptop and words fall onto the screen, so there’s no guarantee that I won’t end up with several thousand words about today. Though I really do doubt it. Last breakfast of Hue hotel soup and assorted buffet bits. If only I had the time, energy and skill, I could really get used to that Hue soup for breakfast, the meaty stock, lots of lemongrass flavour, and a hint of chilli. I won’t be surprised if I do lots of cooking with…
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Five flavours: Day 4 Hue
Soundtrack: “The Lovecats”, The Cure Five flavours: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, spicy. I must admit that over the last few years bitter and sour had become almost synonymous for me, thanks to flavours like bitter lemon, I’ve been using bitter to mean sour, and sour to mean bitter. Call it getting old and lazy. So I went back and looked it up: lemon juice/citrus is sour, coffee is bitter. Sour is related to acidity, bitter is more about the other chemistry. It gets confusing with things like beer: beer is acidic, but with the addition of hops it’s bitter. Lemon juice is sour, but lemon rind is bitter. A whisky…
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Five flavours: Day 3 Hue
Soundtrack: “Khe Sanh”, Cold Chisel Today I’d booked us into a tour of a number of significant sites relating to Viet Nam history, reunification, and of course the American War. L isn’t a fan of war tourism in general, and while I wasn’t looking for some sort of huge glorification, I’m fascinated by significant places of all stripes, and with Hue being so close to the former Khe Sanh AFB, it seemed an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. After another hotel breakfast of soup, ca phe sua dau, and assorted other bites, our guide H met us in the hotel lobby. Once the group of 5 tourists were all in…
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Five flavours: Day 2 Hue
Soundtrack: “Umbrella”, Rhianna Hue. The ancient capital of Viet Nam, full of history and royal tombs, ruined citadels. The scene of some of the worst conflict during the Tet Offensive during the American War (see previous ruined citadels). We toured a lot of that history back in 2014, so this visit is mostly just seeing modern Hue, eating the food, and relaxing knowing we are far from our day jobs. Despite being quite tired from yesterday’s expedition, we were awake fairly early, early enough to catch the hotel breakfast before it entered its death throes. This hotel does a fairly decent breakfast spread: as with all hotel buffets there are…
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Five flavours: Day 1 Perth – Hue
Soundtrack: VietJet boarding music Frequent readers (all 3 of you) can skip this paragraph. It was the same old story, even though I was packed and ready, and it was a mid-morning flight that didn’t need a 3am alarm, I still slept badly and woke up far too early. I’m beginning to think that even if I booked an afternoon or evening departure my body alarm would still kick me up hours before my phone has the chance to say, “Smile! You’re travelling!” We’re flying VietJet this time, even though I basically swore never to fly with them again after the last time (https://www.slowlyandloudly.com/2024/01/08/viet-nam-the-fourth-day-12-hoi-an-transit/) the fare price we got was…
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7NNT25: Day 18 – HCMC – Manila
Soundtrack: “Concrete Jungle”, The Specials It was an earlyish morning, but at least not 530am. Grabbed a standard breakfast in the hotel, while the room was awesome, the breakfast lacked a little dedicated pho station so it was just bacon and eggs for me. Traffic to the airport was a lot less busy, possibly helped by it being a second public holiday, and it only took 25 minutes. Customs and immigration took a while, as there were a lot of people leaving, but I got through with plenty of time to wander the various overpriced souvenir shops on the way to the gate. The flight was full, who knew that…
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7NNT25: Day 17 – Ho Chi Minh City
Soundtrack: The Vietnamese National Anthem / “50 Years”, Uncanny X-Men [Disclaimer: I’m writing this entry a day after the events, and am a bit tired and headachy, so if I fail to capture sufficiently in the words below the sheer wonder I felt all day, well that’s on me.] If we want to go with the idea that there are two types of people defined by some arbitrary criteria, then I’m definitely the type that doesn’t like waking up at 530am. There have been times in my life where I’ve had to wake up at that time consistently, but given any choice or wiggle room, I’m sleeping more. So, regardless…
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7NNT25 Day 16: Chiang Mai > Bangkok > Ho Chi Minh City
Soundtrack: “Khe Sanh”, Cold Chisel Having left day 15 on a cliff hanger, I can reveal that I was able to get up in time to head out and get my laundry just after 9am, so I won’t have to buy any new clothes anytime soon. While I’m travelling with a few treasured items, my green The Clouds t-shirt that I got at a gig the night before I last came to Thailand, which has travelled a bunch since, was recognised by a friend of the band in Fort William, and was also photographed in the main court of the Rijksmuseum (two of us have now done this, so it’s…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 12 Hoi An – transit
A fairly quiet day really, as the plan was that I’d get picked up around 4pm at the hotel for my flight to HCMC then home. I’m writing this at Da Nang airport, after my flight was due to depart, as VietJet have been sending me updates all day telling me my flight is delayed. In theory I’ve got about an hour until I board, in practice who knows. It turn out that while VietJet are cheap, they aren’t actually that good. Despite booking a two stop ticket, I’ve been told that they can’t check my bag through to destination, so at HCMC I get to pick up my case,…
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Viet Nam the fourth: Day 11 Hoi An
My last full day in Hoi An, and also L’s birthday. After breakfast we went to pick up our laundry, things sure are fierce along laundry street. once we’d got our clothes we walked the length of the street, and no less than two other locals, looking at our bag (and assuming it contained dirty clothes) gestured for us to come to them for laundry. Once they realised we were carrying a bag of clean clothes they went back into the shadows, watching, planning, scheming. If not today or tomorrow, some day soon laundry wars are coming to Hoi An. We checked out a different massage place this morning, one…
